By Shaenon K. Garrity

Menu

The Hardy Boyz and Lita were so boss when they first came over to the WWF from the independent circuit. I love the more acrobatic, lighter-weight wrestlers, and of course I dig lady wrestlers who can actually wrestle. I saw all three of them live in a ladder match once, and it was totally sweet. Sadly, the Boyz and Lita have since split up and had the kind of problems generally euphemized in pro wrestling as “personal demons,” and any time I’ve seen them since it hasn’t been the same.

Sorry, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah. The gender swap. Girl Dave actually looks pretty cute in this strip. If I were drawing this later, though, I would’ve made her hair less stringy, and more like the way I drew guy Dave’s hair in the later years.

Song list:

70. “Waking the Monster,” by Darren Hayes

The professor is building something extraordinary From the first signs I knew he would hide it from me Clang, clang, rattle, and buzz There’s a helicopter blade and a bit of a truck

Suggested by my friend Drave. Thanks, Drave!

Gender-bending and pro wrestling. This was what I had running on Christmas Day.

Those are some disgustingly cute wrestlers on that poster. I cannot draw tough guys to save my life. Mick Foley is in the flannel shirt at the right, and I’m not even sure who the rest are supposed to be, although I think I can make out Kane and Lita.

Dave’s crush on Mick Foley, who at the time was playing the commissioner of the WWF on the shows, is of course entirely autobiographical. I just think Mick Foley is really, really neat. He’s happily married, but I’m sure he and Dave would get along very well.

Song list:

71. “Plastic Fantastic Lover,” by Jefferson Airplane

Super-sealed lady, chrome-color clothes You wear ’cause you have no other But I suppose no one knows You’re my plastic fantastic lover

I apologize for not remembering who first recommended this to me. Anyway, thanks very much. I have to admit I enjoy all Jefferson vehicles.

This is the kind of thing I get hung up on in gender-swap stories: should the characters still be attracted to the sex they were attracted to before, or the opposite sex? Earlier, Helen showed a continued interest in Madblood, but that could be as much about their ongoing rivalry as anything else. In the end, I decided that girl Dave should be attracted to men, because it’s funnier. And it makes Dave really uncomfortable and defensive.

Dave’s book in the first panel: Advanced Java for the Smug. Also, Dave appears to have moved her Darth Maul beanie to the office, where it sits next to an angry toy Hulk.

Song list:

72. “The Scientist,” by Coldplay

Questions of science Science and progress Do not speak as loud as my heart

Come tell me you love me Come back and haunt me All in a rush to the start

Running in circles Chasing our tails Comin’ back as we are

Aimee Mann’s cover of this is a million times better, for the obvious reason that she’s not Coldplay.

“You’ve been awfully cranky since I turned you into a woman” is a great opening line, admit it.

Short Man’s Syndrome comes from an episode of MST3K wherein Tom Servo was diagnosed with the disorder, but I think we’ve all encountered it at some point. Personally, like Dave, I’d probably be less upset about having my sex reversed than about suddenly being a foot shorter.

Song list:

73. “Screaming in Digital,” by Queensryche

I am the beat of your pulse The computer word made flesh We are one, you and I We are versions of the same When you can see what I feel Don’t turn your back on me Or you might find that your dreams Are only program cards

Of course, songs about creepy AIs are a whole subgenre onto themselves, the surface of which I’ve barely scratched with this list. Like songs about going to the moon.

Yeah, this strip is just fluff, but at least I got off the subject of pro wrestling. Also, “Funny Girl” comes up again, if only as a video cover. I swear people still occasionally watched videos at the time I drew this strip.

Dave looks so dejected in the first panel. Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.

Song list:

74. “Going Digital,” by Jason Radford

I’m headin’ off on a digital trip and that’s what I plan to do I’m goin’ away to a digital plane and I ain’t comin’ back real soon The whole thing is electrical It’s running through my veins And everything’s connectable Hey! Digital!

From the “Digimon: The Movie” soundtrack. YES.

I dislike this strip because it gets back into the tired, if sometimes accurate, “geeks are scared of girls” stereotype. However, “scuttle away with a crablike gait” is pretty good, as is Helen’s advice to Dave in the second panel. It’s useful in so many situations.

Actually, I imagine Male! Helen as speaking in a sort of rich, deep baritone, lilting into a tenor in difference to still having a female speaking pattern. . . a sort of mild Jafar from Aladdin pitch, with just an edge of Bela Lugosi.

.. . yes, I always put this much thought into these things. I practically have a cast list for Narbonic animated.

Dave tries hard to stop his mind inexorably melting into the shape of his ‘incorrect’ body, to stop the male Dave from, shall we say, disappearing from the photograph. His sanity is one thing, but this is, inexplicably, even more personal.

What on Earth are Dave’s hands doing in panel 2? Is he really disassembling his keyboard in the middle of conversation?

Speaking as a rightpondian, I basically Do Not Understand Wrestling. (It’s something about television wrestlers pretending to be wrestling on television but actually acting out episodes of some wierd metadrama sitcom, right?) This does largely means I don’t get most of the WWF references.

It’s Walky took the “straight gender-swapper people remain straight for their new gender” tack as well. This was largely to set up gender-swapper Walky kissing gender-swapper Joyce. “Misfile”, on the other hand, leaves Ash liking women, the better to build tension of all kinds with Emily.

Ed:Yeah, this one girl. I’m not horribly hung up about last names and I come from a family with 5 boys, so there’s no worries of the family name dying out. Thing is, she hated her family, so she wanted nothing to do with that last name. I want to say she changed her middle name when marrying too, and not to a “maiden name”.Jon:Ear, bone chips, teeth… his books give a more accurate tally of the injuries, but the guy is more banged up than Jackie Chan.

To David Given, the Rightpondian: Fear not. Regarding American TV wrestling, there’s nothing to get. If you take the emotional investment and intensity of “the human drama of athletic competition” in the World Cup (or The Ashes if you went to public school), put it in an artificial environment, carefully control the outcomes to create a long-running storyline with recognizable archetypes and rising and falling story arcs, tap into the human need to reach into a larger world, add the backstage politics of any difficult entertainment craft (and it is terribly difficult – have no doubt of that), combine it with the fickleness of entertainment fandom, then sell commercial time between the performances to pay for it all.

Think of as The Truman Show meets Jerry Springer.

Which is to say “As a left-pondian, right-coasted Southerner, I don’t get it either.” But then I’m not from this planet. I’m just here as part of some bizarre experiment on the part of my homeworld. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Hey, I just realized Dave’s having a What Women Want moment, largely by being the same size as Mel Gibson. (I friend of mine who is an American Revolution re-enactor was not selected as an extra for The Patriot. He, like a number of others, was too much taller than Gibson.)

Fortunately, this episode and all of next week is satisfyingly subverted later, when Dave tries in vain to boast about having a girlfriend. The world moves on!

It occurs to me that Dave is not just comically short but worryingly short. …Could it be that the necessary consequence of male-to-female transformation is Turner syndrome?! (Now that would be a deconstructed trope.)

It occurs to me that Dave is not just comically short but worryingly short.

Making it that much harder to squat below its line of vision…. 🙂 Remember that not only has Dave gotten shorter, but Helen is now taller. And Dave still slumps, while Helen doesn’t. Even so… that first panel makes femDave look like a hobbit!